The digital magazine known far and wide as Flipboard has just pushed an update on its official Google Play Beta channel, and it's a big one. The Cover Stories UI is getting a makeover, and the way you access and find content is getting crammed in some drawers somewhere.

There are a number of small tweaks throughout the new beta. Here are the headlining features.

Profiles for Flipboard users

Experimental app navigation interface on phones

New cover on Cover Stories feed

Left drawer now contains magazines you're following and notifications/settings

Right drawer now contains search, topics, and suggested sources

Improved performance for interface for flipping into magazines

Fix issue causing duplicate items to sometimes show up in feeds

Improvements to interface for seeking help within the app

Fix issue with ad cropping on tablets

Fix some higher density layouts showing up on phones

Fix minor issue related to storing feeds for offline viewing

Other bug fixes and improvements

The left drawer looks quite a lot different than the old one. It has large image tiles and all your profile information right there. It's essentially the way you access your personalized content, and it works throughout the app. The main interface when you start up is just the cover stories feed. The right drawer is a re-styled search page, which mostly works the same way it did, but it's easier to access. If you want to give the beta a shot, just join the beta group, then opt into the test.

Ryan is a tech/science writer, skeptic, lover of all things electronic, and Android fan. In his spare time he reads golden-age sci-fi and sleeps, but rarely at the same time. His wife tolerates him as few would.
He's the author of a sci-fi novel called The Crooked City, which is available on Amazon and Google Play.

Comments

How does flipboard compare to someone like Feedly or NewsRepublic? I've used Feedly for awhile, but I find it buggy and unreliable. Is Flipboard better?

Segroukin

Yup, Flipboard is the best magazine out there with no bugs whatsoever

emma852

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http://www.apostolapostolov.com/ Apostol Apostolov

@Feedly is better for Google Reader-like RSS consumption habit. @Flipboard is better for reading news from social networks, like what #Facebook #Paper tries to be.

Jorem

feedly if you are more interested in tracking the latest content from particular sources and you want something that can be accessed with a desktop/laptop (via the web client). flipboard is more beautiful and is focused more on content curation and discovery

Definitely checkout Circa. I haven't used Flipboard or Feedly much, after finding Circa.

Fatal1ty_93_RUS

How about fixing notifications? I had it before switching Pulse for quite some time but could not stand the absence of push notifications about new articles available, despite them being turned on in settings, but later realized that feedly has a better widget and Google account integration, so I dropped Pulse too... But feedly only had notifications in the desktop chrome extension :/

Oh, what do I do?

Guest

I prefer feedly in terms of UI and content management. Also, I haven't had any problems in terms of bugs. In addition, you can use it to look through your facebook feed if you dont like using the facebook app.

Taylor00

I dropped Flipboard the moment I discovered Feedly. While Feedly is nowhere perfect, it is a lot faster to skim through news using it.

This is what's ruined G+ and twitter for me. I have to join so many communities to join the beta programs that my home feed is now flooded with items from them and hence I don't visit G+ anymore. Similar with twitter. Follow for giveaway. Never won anything but my home is flooded with stuff I don't care about. So, not visiting twitter either.

bL4Ck

You know you can disable all posts from a community?
From your phone, enter community > menu button > community settings > remove toggle from "Show Posts", that's it. You can do this also from desktop but don't remember how, it something similar thou.